Monday, February 25, 2008

A brief de-railment

Before I finish my amazing tale of Evanston adventure, I'm going to share the best thing I've ever done with my life to date.

*Ahem*

Will a paper areo-plane fly more efficently with two bottle-rockets attached?

It certainly seems like it would. And seeing how I have yet to have a bad idea, I decided to try it.

Things immediately took a turn for the worst. First and foremost, it is very difficult to ensure that BOTH bottle-rocket devices fire at the same time. If one bottle rocket fires first, then the plane only has half it's potential power, plus it kinda flys all crazy like. I guess that's why they don't have two big fuses underneath the space shuttle. Finally, in my blind zeal to scratch the eyes of the heavens, I forgot that the flight of bottle-rockets is ended with a energetic explosion. If one bottle-rocket explodes while the other is still spitting on gravity's blowse, then the whole flight pattern is thrown off. Anyway, we only got 10 feet or so.

Also, it turns out that fire is bad for paper. It makes it all crunchy, like really old crunch berries.

It seemed like maybe I could minimze the effects of ill-timed bottle-rocket fireings by ensureing that the plane was already in the air when the rocket went off. That way no matter when the rocket went off, it would simply power the plane to new and better places. So I decided to try again.

This time planning to light the bottle-rockets, then throw the plane so it's already in the air when the gunpowder party kicks up. As for the exposive end, I figured that the bottle rockets would probably explode with just the right amount of energy as to simply detach from the plane, allowing it to glide gently back to the surface after a good 45 minute flight from an elevation of 700 feet. Anyway, again things went immediately wrong. I can't really put words to what happened. Something exploded too early, then there were problems with areodynamicy, plus I burnt my hand. Anyway, we got 20 feet or so, but most of that was just from me throwing the stupid thing.

Again, there was significant damage to the plane.

I again suspect that fire is the culpret of the strange black markings all over the plane. Either that or it is a small portion of outter space that got caught on my plane from it's epic journey.

So, in short, the answer is no. Attaching bottle rockets to a paper plane will not help it fly more efficently. At least not in the configuration in which my plane was set up. Undaunted, several new flight plans have been created. I will tell you how it works out. I suspect that NASA will be seeing a small, brave paper plane flying past Uranus (heh) in no time.

About Me

I am a 36 year old geologist. Well, kinda geologist. I used to spend my day putting dirt in little baggies and tube for study. Now I'm unemployed and looking for love. In High School I ran for class office and lost.